Tag Archives: BeatPlay

Muppets fans get ready. A couple weeks ago the soundtrack to the new highly anticipated Muppet movie was released. Amazing indie rock acts takes on Muppet classics. I love the muppets more than sunshine to the point where it is extremely awkward when people come into my office and see my collection of Muppet shit, but guess what? I don’t care. Muppets are cooler than skinny jeans and flannel. Before I get into the artists and the record itself I wanna kick it off with a Muppet classic we all know and love done a little bit differently… ok, go.

This soundtrack features 12 tracks from folks like the aforementioned OK Go to the sweet solo sounds of Andrew Bird and Rachel Yamagata and pretty much everyone in between. These new takes on old classics are re-energizing my childhood dreams of becoming Animal when I grow up.

As you can see from OK Go’s take on The Muppet Show Theme Song people are doing things a little differently on this record. One of my favorite songs is Rainbow Connection. Done by Weezer and Hayley Williams of Paramore fame. They take a more straight forward approach to the tune and thats not a bad thing at all.

Other great artists include My Morning Jacket with “Our World” and Alkaline Trio with “Movin’ Right Along”. Both are hugely successful acts who have come up through the indie and jam scenes. Another great standout is LA’s own Airborne Toxic Event with an awesome take on “Wishing Song.”

As a compilation this record is a gem and as a compilation involving the new Muppets movie it’s even better. We all know and love these songs and we all know and love the artists covering these tunes. Here’s a full track list just incase your gonna be “that guy” and not just go out and buy the record based on the awesome tracks you’ve already heard.

There is a great balance between the full band blowouts and the small gentle solo acts on this compilation. Songs to note aside from what I mentioned above are “I Hope That Something Better Comes Along” by Matt Nathanson and The Fray with the popular “Mahna Mahna”. To end this thing properly I have to post the latter of those two tracks and then as usual with all my blogs, the last track on The Green Album.

Where can you find ten of the best singer/songwriters from Tennessee in one place to play a concert together? Nashville’s own free concert series: Live on the Green!

Ten Out of Tenn is more than a band comprised of ten of Nashville’s best singer/songwriters. It represents a community of friends and artists that make up one of the best emerging artist scenes in the country. When most people think of Nashville, they think about pop country and honky tonks, but Music City has much more to offer the current music industry. That is part of the reason why Ten out of Tenn came to exist. The band showcases the raw talent in a group of friends that “create organic pop music in the shadows of today’s slick commercial country music industry.” They travel together as a band supporting each other, and as a sum of creative talent on stage, showcasing some of the best and brightest songs and songwriters that Nashville has to offer. Ten Out of Tenn features Katie Herzig, Andy Davis, Tyler James, Trent Dabbs, K.S. Rhoads, Griffin House, Matthew Perryman Jones, Butterfly Boucher, Jeremy Lister and Erin McCarley. Will Sayles is the group’s talented drummer. Check out these clips from some of my favorite new songs!

The idea to form this singer-songwriter supergroup was born while Kristen and Trent Dabbs were on the road. They recognized that some of their favorite music came from their friends who were also emerging artists. “We were thinking about how much music we like that happens to be our friends,” said Trent. “There’s a community of people here with a lot of talent.” That idea turned into a perfect reality when they were able to get a group of other incredibly talented artists to join them. Since then, “Ten Out of Tenn has produced compilation albums, a Christmas album, four tours, showcases at music festivals like SXSW, and an award winning documentary, Any Day Now, that debuted during the 2009 Nashville Film Festival.” The documentary fully illustrates the concept and the purpose behind Ten Out of Tenn, and gives an excellent view of what it means for the individual artists that are part of this team. Check out the trailer for Any Day Now, filmed by Jeff Wyatt Wilson.

Ever go to a concert and can’t wait until the band plays their best songs? Well imagine hearing 20 excellent songs in a row from some of the best singer/songwriters in Nashville. These talented artists and musicians don’t just stand around while one plays their song. They are also the backing band for each other, and it creates such an amazing vibe. As individual artists, these singer/songwriters have “released over thirty albums, had song placements in countless television programs & films, and shared the stage with musicians such as REM, Sarah McLachlan and John Mayer.” However for Ten Out of Tenn, fame or fortune isn’t a priority. The drive behind their purpose surrounds the age-old concept of creating and sharing their music with other people. The bottom line is that this group is amazing. Unfortunately, Ten Out of Tenn has only two more stops on their tour! Stay up to date with the latest music and tour dates from Ten Out of Tenn and learn more at 10outoftenn.com.

I’m going to start this blog off by saying I love music. I love the sounds I love being a part of thriving music scene here in LA, seeing shows and being a small part of the creativity. Back in the day in college I went the standard college radio station route to put myself right smack frickin dab in the middle of arguably one of the most diverse and ever changing music scenes in the country, Boston Massachusetts. Little WERS 88.9 fm has literally made me the music fan I am today and my dad, can’t forget him either. I have been to hundreds of shows and in those early years where I discovered it’s always better in a small club rather than a giant arena I got a glimpse of amazing real talent. This band I’m about to introduce you to is one of those groups whose members bring music and love of music full circle on a personal level. They are the Barr Brothers and their new record is something that I honestly don’t want to share with anyone and keep all to myself, but we all know I can’t keep a secret to save my life.

Brad and Andrew Barr are from Boston Massachusetts. They live in Canada now. They have a band which are called The Slip they share with bassist Marc Friedman and now they are The Barr Brother which the share with harpist and neighbor Sarah Page and Andres Vial who fills the void by playing bass, keys and percussion. My first introduction to these gentlemen was when they were part of The Slip when they were touring behind their amazing album Eisenhower. I remember doing two in studio mixes with the guys one was fully plugged in and the other was acoustic. The first mix was all material from Eisenhower, but the second they shared with me a couple new songs and I gave them my mixes to use as demos to make a new record with. This was about 5 years ago.

I have a amazing treat for this blog. One of the demos I recorded back in the day made it on the Barr Brothers newest release. To clarify my version didn’t make it on, but the song did. I’m going to post both of them. The first version of the song was recorded with Brad playing his acoustic guitar and Andrew playing the studios Steinway grand piano. The second is the second track off the Barr Brother’s self titled release. Same song, years apart.

Pretty cool huh? I don’t know how to play music very well but I’m pretty sure they changed the key. I’d love to know what you guys think in the comments section below. This is one of my favorite songs I was given the opportunity to record during my stay at WERS and as far as the record the music on this release is diverse and something that I could only see coming from the musicians that made it. I think it is truly listeners music. The nuances in it and the light additions of keys and the harp just bring light to the whole thing. Not every song is as light a lullaby as Ooh, Belle after all they were in an experimental rock/ jazz outfit for many years. Try this one on for size.

They still have the rock in them. I love the guitar and vocal pairing on this song. Brad Barr is an amazing guitar player and with the effects used on his vocals with his style of singing on this song it’s a little bit of a wake up and just shows how diverse these musicians really are.

There is a little blues element a little middle eastern rhythm and of course a jazzy element to this tune that really grabbed me and is definitely the standout on a record of standouts. I think tune will drive all the points I just made home. The next two tracks after Give The Devil Back His Heart are quiet acoustic songs, amazing, but then we get to the 7th track on the record called Lord I Just Can’t Keep From Cryin’. Welcome to the delta…

I can’t boast about these guys enough. They are amazing musicians and from my limited interaction with them over the years, they are amazing people always generous to share new music and try new things. I think this record is a testament to their efforts to try new styles of music and play the music that inspires them. From the quietest notes of Ooh Belle to the loudest grittiest notes of Lord I Just Can’t… the dynamic range on this record is really one to be admired. As a music fan I think I can recommend this band and this music to just about any one.

The Barr Brothers are currently touring on their new self titled release and will be making stops in Los Angeles on November 2nd at the Hotel Cafe. Do your selves 2 favors. Get your hands on this record. It is available on Amazon and iTunes. It is also available to listen to on Spotify. Here is the last track from The Barr Brother’s self titled release. Next time I’m going to write about the Muppets, yes the Muppets.

Alright, “I want to lay-down 96 flash-drives flat in the shape of a canvas, so you can paint a portrait over top of them.” Now this was obviously something new and different for any painter, but a creative way to bring the parallel minds of artists together through multitudes of expression. So we set out in search of an artist in the San Diego area that would fit the job, and I could have never imagined who was about to respond to our postings. One of San Diego’s premier painters, SHAY DAVIS!!! (http://shayvision.com). When we first got a look at some of his work, we were just absolutely blown away. There was no way in hell that someone this talented, the modern-day Dali, was going to work for this project or even fit into the budget for that matter. It couldn’t have been a better match. Luckily having most of the Beat-Play Team in town, Shay was able to meet the whole company and right away felt that he was a sure-fit into the lifestyle of Beat-Play, knowing the hardships and reality of being an independent artist today.

After that first meeting we got right to work. Shay’s mission was to give people his visual representation of the current struggles seen in independent music community. Being in a similar situation as his own, through the art world, Shay was quickly able to jump into this vision. Now you have a plan, but then you’re going to need some supplies. So here’s what we used:

Once all the supplies were gathered, Shane Suski (film/photography) and I rolled over to Shay’s studio and started setting up. Having one camera sit-still on the tri-pod and Shane pan the room with his SLR, we were really able to capture the full painting process that went into creating this piece from all possible angles, using video and photography. I suggest going full-screen with this one:

The video came out great but nothing makes a video better than some bangin’ music. So we hit Tomatofish up for some more information regarding the use of his Simulacrum track on the video. He was all for it and that’s what you hear now. Tomatofish is one of a kind, compose all sorts of tracks ranging from hip-hop beats to classical pieces. This is just another pure talent that makes this project so great.

With the launch of Beatplay.com and our Facebook application we would like to spread the love to the public by giving back to the users of Beat-Play, by offering the flash-drives from the painting. The contest is simple. Mention Beatplay.com on your Facebook or Twitter feeds and become eligible to receive ONE of the 96 flash-drives. There aren’t too many drives to go around so make sure your post stands-out.

I keep finding myself at punk rock shows in Nashville, but that’s not a bad thing. Nashville’s punk scene has grown tremendously over the last four to five years and is now thriving. This particular show at The End was packed with a younger crowd ready to rock, and I don’t think the bartender sold less than a hundred PBRs… per hour. With a lineup of underground Nashville bands Watusi, Spanish Candles, Evan P. Donohue, and Diarrhea Planet, this show was set up to be a wild night. All the bands that night put on killer shows, but I was particularly interested in hearing music from Evan P. Donohue and his band.

Evan P. Donohue is a local independent Nashville songwriter and artist who has set himself apart from the typical rock bands in Music City. He writes intelligently through stories about semi-fictional characters and experiences from his life. With his drummer Mike Kavouras, Donohue arranges and develops music that that creatively supports and nourishes the lyrics and stories in his songs. There aren’t too many young indie rock bands with this combination of musical excellence and purpose behind clever ideas and words. Evan P. Donohue continues to push his music to new heights, and released a full-length debut album last year called Rhythm & Amplitute to do just that. Check out one of my favorite songs from the album, “O Justice!”

The entire album cannot be confined to just one specific genre because I find a complex combination of feels in the music that associate with past and contemporary rock, pop, surf-rock, and Americana artists. This rings true, since some of Donohue’s influences are T.Rex, Elvis Costello, Of Montreal, Beach Boys, Tom Waits, and David Rawlings. Rhythm & Amplitude plays with a variety of musical styles, and the songs are a collection of reality-turned fiction stories that blend while maintaining truth as their foundation. Evan P. Donohue’s bio states, “Masterfully crafting sardonic portraits of decidedly earnest characters, Evan P. Donohue poetically chooses his words to express the struggles and affections his often tragic characters experience by the choices they’ve faced in life. The surf-rock ballad “California Sunshine” speaks of a middle-aged man who rebels against the monotony of his life, eventually finding peace and happiness “sleeping under Starlight”, a prostitute employed at the Mexican brothel where the track gets its title.” I really couldn’t have said it better myself! Check out some more music from Evan P. Donohue’s Rhythm & Amplitude:

Whether it’s taking old stories and making them new or creating new truths with current realities, Donohue has something undeniably great. His music tells tales, embraces ideas, and develops new songs that go far beyond today’s pop hits. Nashville seems like an excellent fit for this up-and-coming artist who is set to debut more recordings this fall. On November 11, 2011, Evan P. Donohue will be releasing a 7-inch called Jazzputin. The record will contain two new songs that I, and every single one of his fans are very excited about. Listen to more music, stay up to date with Evan P. Donohue, and buy an Rhythm & Amplitude!

It’s another Saturday in Nashville and if you’re the least bit interested in new music from Nashville, you have to be at Centennial Park for another round of bands at Musicians Corner. There were a number of great artists that performed this week including a new electronic indie rock group called SPELLS. Led by Trevor James Tillery, SPELLS made their debut performance at Musicians Corner, and gave themselves a great start to a promising season of promoting their new music. That’s right, they also have a really impressive debut album called Escapist.

SPELLS independently released Escapist on July 15, 2011. The album travels back and forth between serene melodies and big dirty electronic grooves. Songs like “Escapist” and “Where Have You Been” really drive the album with dominating hooks and big Muse-like bass lines, while songs like “City on a Hill” reproduce a somber feel with ambient sweeps that seem to support lyrics about a broken world. Overall, this is a really cool album that contains some very intelligent music. Both the musicianship and songwriting replicate a great sound and fresh feel. For example, “Transient” carries a tight groove in an ambient song about the mystery of life. I feel the need to say, Jake Goss, I love the entrance with the crash on two after the rolls. It puts a perfect touch on top of those phrases. Enough of me talking about the music, take a listen to some killer new tracks from SPELLS:

Throughout Escapist, SPELLS “writes about a yearning for something beyond the modern world. He’s rebelling against the technology-saturated realm that adds layer upon layer of complication to life, causing dreams to become a small glimmer in the back of people’s minds as they chase the material.” (Next Big Nashville). Tillery has something important to say, and he’s saying it through his carefully-crafted melodic electro-pop. “These are the kind of songs I write,” he reveals. “These are the things that I’m constantly thinking about and haunted by. And music is an outlet where I can get that out – an outlet to hopefully get other people thinking and start knocking down walls.”

Escapist was produced by Josh Niles and featured Trevor Tillery (vocals, guitars, keys), Brian McSweeney (vocal percussion, backing vocals), Jake Goss (drums), and Adrian Walther (bass). After working on the record for the last year, it released this summer and has been getting a lot of local attention in Nashville. SPELLS played at 12th & Porter on thursday night as part of Next Big Nashville’s Soundland Festival, which took place this week. This is a band that you need to know about. Keep listening and supporting SPELLS because they’ve really got something here. Check them out online at spellsofficial.com.

What would rock music be without the guitar? What would most music today be without the guitar? It’s difficult to imagine, and nearly impossible to really think about. We wouldn’t have Elvis, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, and other legends that have directly influenced much of today’s music. Fortunately, we can all relax because the guitar exists. However, for Alex Brubaker, the guitar is not just a guitar. It’s a rhythm section and an entire musical ensemble that can be looped, distorted, delayed, scratched, hit, tapped, and transformed into new musical opportunities. With influences ranging from Dream Theater to Trace Bundy, you might expect that his style would reflect progressive experimentation with this age-old instrument. You would be close to correct, but listen for yourself to one of his songs called “Ice Mountain.”

After starting on prog rock and metal in high school, Brubaker transformed his style by applying the same ideas and techniques to the acoustic guitar, but that’s not all. He has incorporated looping, tapping, alternate tuning, and using two guitars. His creativity is refreshing and his ideas are unique. Brubaker released his debut album called Deconstructing the Temporal Lobe in September 2009 after only two years of experimenting with percussive fingerstyle guitar. You’ve got to give it another listen if you are the least bit interested in the guitar or if you just like music! In this next song, Alex incorporates both acoustic and electric guitar to create a pretty dope riff. It’s called “Phoenix.” Check it out.

Slightly different than your typical I IV V, huh? In today’s music industry, we get sucked into songs with the same progressions, forms, rhythms, and bass lines. It’s like walking through an art gallery with paintings, sculptures, and art forms that are just modern copies of what’s been done before. They’re good, but they are just communicating what’s been said in earlier paintings without any creative change. It’s not only rare to try to be an innovative artist, but it’s also difficult. Similar to the rise of street art in recent years, the rise of new independent music has seemed to explode through channels like youtube and social media. It’s easier now than ever to go searching for new artists and music because of technology.

Alex Brubaker likes to challenge music. What new sounds can I make using this instrument, and what obscure pattern of rhythms can I fit here? These are common questions for Alex. His debut album Deconstructing the Temporal Lobe features sounds and feelings created by using the guitar in a variety of ways. With electric and acoustic, distorted and clean, Alex displays a mixture of experimentation on the guitar that makes for great listening anytime. Songs like “Phoenix” display powerful riffs with creative loops and textures, while songs like “Debris of a Brainstorm” take you from one melodic idea to another. When you listen to Alex Brubaker’s songs, they allow your mind to relax and just listen, because each guitar medley paints an incredible picture. Check out more of his music and purchase Deconstructing the Temporal Lobe at alexbrubakerguitar.com.

Beat-Play just announced their official public Beta launch. We’re here today with Beat-Play’s founder and CEO, Dante Cullari, to tell us some more about the company.

Dante, what is the goal of Beat-Play?

Beat-Play’s aim is to provide an optimized digital infrastructure to the music industry as a whole. We want our tools to encompass a full spectrum of opportunities for artists and fans to create, promote, distribute, monetize, organize and listen to music. We understand that there is no one perfect solution that will work for everybody, so our goal is really to provide a number of options for each of the different components of the music industry I just mentioned. All of this is now made significantly easier with digital, online and social technologies, and we feel that centralizing these solutions by defragmenting music into one rich community will also be beneficial for everyone. We want to help create the foundation for a long lasting, sustainable and prosperous world music industry online, as we move forward into the future.

What does Beat-Play offer artists and fans right now?

Our first and current product addresses promotion and distribution for artists (or discovery and sharing for fans), organization and playback. Right now, Beat-Play is a streaming player that promotes music to fans with something we call Bump, which is a search based on tags, or keywords that the user enters. Listeners can use Moods, Locations, Artist Names, Genres, Activities or really almost anything, to describe the music that they want to hear. Beat-Play then creates a custom playlist for the listener consisting of both music and videos (via Souncloud, Youtube and Beat-Play itself) based on matches to the user’s tags. These playlists are updated in real time as music is continually added to the service and tagged. Fans can then save the music that they find and like into playlists, and share these playlists with their friends through Facebook.

While the current product currently offers limited functionality, our next product will focus on adding in new options, as well as improving current ones.

What are you working on for the future?

Our next product will address several issues. We’re working on mobile to improve access. The next product will also be socially integrated which again will aid in promotion and distribution, or sharing and discovery, and we hope to also include some more options for user customization. We want to make organizing and managing your listening experience better, with more custom presets, which again, will help in discovery and also fan retention.

The next big step for us then is really artist monetization. As mentioned before, we realize that one option will not be sufficient for every artist, so we’re planning on introducing things like music and merch stores, ticketing and show booking, commercial music license stores or auctions, and even advertising opportunities.

Advertising is actually something I want to briefly touch on – To quote the Facebook movie, “Advertising isn’t cool.” In the movie that’s really all they needed to say about it before just turning their backs on it. I feel that this is an attitude that most companies have towards advertising, but nobody really wants to be the one to challenge it. On Beat-Play, we’ve come up with a way around this.

First of all, artists on Beat-Play will own their own ad space, and they can leverage their statistics on Beat-Play and on Facebook to negotiate better rates with sponsors. As far as the ads themselves, you wont see annoying and interruptive commercials, or huge flashy banners. Our ads will instead be designed to actually add to the listener’s experience by offering pieces of bonus content relevant to the artist or the music itself. It could be a music video, a cool app, or even a video game. If it’s Skrillex, maybe it’s a Dj app. If it’s Slightly Stoopid, maybe it’s a surfing game you can play while listening to the music. Also, the listeners won’t be distracted by these ads. On the player itself we’ll use something that we call postage stamp ads, because they’re just about the size of a postage stamp. If the user doesn’t want to engage with the ads, they don’t have to, and they won’t be interrupted by them. For the people who do choose to engage with the ads, they’ll get some additional content that they couldn’t have gotten otherwise, creating incentive to actually share ad content. This provides a great revenue stream to the artists, allows the fans to continue to listen to their favorite music for free potentially, and also provides some great cred for the sponsors involved. Everybody really wins, and this even has some great potential to curb piracy for artists. These are the kinds of solutions that we’re looking forward to making available to the music industry in the near future, using digital technologies to make it happen.

How can people help?

Get on board now. It’s only going to get better, and for artists especially, it’s a good idea to start gaining their fan-base here so they can get their statistics up. Even if they’re not on Beat-Play though, building Facebook statistics will still help them out, and Beat-Play could still help promote an artist if their music is on Soundcloud, Youtube or Jamendo right now. So not being on Beat-Play doesn’t necessarily mean that you can’t still benefit from it, but it’s a good idea to get on there now as we’ll really be able to offer the fans a better experience with their music on Beat-Play if they do. It’s completely free, so there’s nothing lost by trying it, and for fans right now we really offer some great discovery and organization options, along with unlimited, uninterrupted free streaming. Mobile is obviously something we’re really excited about pushing out next.

As we continue to grow, we will really need help from the artists and fans to support and build this community. We need artists to upload their music and tell their friends and their fans. We also need artists to work together in helping to support and promote each other by tagging fellow artists in their own songs. Most of all though, we need artists and fans to really take ownership of this community, and take advantage of the free options we’re putting out there. This really does need to be a team effort, and I think we have the strength and the ability as indie artists to build something huge, so that we can have the kind of impact that we need in order to benefit all of the incredibly talented independent artists out there that are struggling right now, and also to impact the fans that are missing out on a lot of great music because of it. We’ve had a great response from artists so far, and we’re confident that these solutions will bring some big changes to the way the music industry operates in the coming years.

You can go to Beatplay.com right now to sign up, and you’ll be asked to login with your Facebook account. We don’t auto-post to anybody’s walls, or publish any user information, not even on the Beat-Play player itself right now, so your account will still be completely secure.

If you have issues or suggestions, please contact us! We are still in beta so we understand there’s a lot of room for us to grow, but we’re working really hard with our small team to keep up with the demand for more features. The player is best used with Firefox right now also. Again, we really appreciate the support of the independent music community that we’re getting, from both artists and fans, and we’re extremely excited to get to the next level!

Dante, thank you so much for the interview.

Absolutely, Thank you!

To get you started, here are some awesome playlists courtesy of the Beat-Play team – over 6 hours of great tunes:

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